The folks over at Videocardz have been true to their name, and managed to snag some images of the latest NVIDIA "sleeper hit" GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. Clad in Gigabyte black and orange and sporting the slightly (currently) out of favor Gaming moniker, the Gigabyte GeForce GTX 1070 Ti Gaming doesn't include any mention of OC in the name, which could be for one of three reasons. NVIDIA may have disabled any overclocks beyond their included Boost clocks, in a bid to not cannibalize sales of the GTX 1080 with this product; Gigabyte still hasn't finalized specifications; or Gigabyte has finalized specs and the card rally doesn't feature any factory overclock.

Ahead of its October 26 launch, someone with access to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 Ti sample put it through "Ashes of the Singularity" (AotS) benchmark, with its scores even getting posted on its online database. Paired with an Intel Core i9-7900X based high-end machine, and running the benchmark's DirectX 11 API version, the card scored 6,200 points in the "Extreme" (1440p) preset.

This score spaces it significantly apart from the GTX 1070, which typically scores around 5,400 points in this test, and the GTX 1080, which puts out around 7,000 points. The GTX 1070 Ti manages to keep frame-rates of AotS consistently above 60 frames per second. Much like the Radeon RX Vega 56 it's designed to compete with, the GTX 1070 Ti will find its comfort-zone with the 1440p resolution, even though it will be capable of playable (≥30 fps) frame-rates at 4K Ultra HD.

NVIDIA could severely limit the overclocking capabilities of its upcoming "almost GTX 1080" performance-segment graphics card, the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti. The company will tightly control the non-reference clock-speeds at which its add-in card (AIC) partners ship their custom-design graphics cards; and there could even be tighter limits to which you can overclock these cards. NVIDIA is probably doing this to ensure it doesn't completely cannibalize its GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card, which has been recently refreshed with faster 11 Gbps GDDR5X memory.

The GTX 1070 Ti is based on a "GP104" Pascal silicon with a core-configuration that's vastly higher than the current GTX 1070, and too close to that of the GTX 1080. It features 2,432 CUDA cores, just 128 fewer than the GTX 1080, and core clock speed of 1608 MHz that's on-par with the pricier card, too. The GPU Boost frequency is set to 1683 MHz, which is lower than the 1733 MHz of the GTX 1080. It also features slower GDDR5 memory. The GTX 1070 Ti is expected to launch by the 26th of October, priced at $429.

NVIDIA's upcoming GeForce GTX 1070 Ti performance-segment graphics card, which could be launched toward the end of this month, with market-availability following in early-November; could feature 9 Gbps GDDR5 memory, and not the previously-thought 8 Gbps GDDR5. This "almost-GTX 1080" answer of NVIDIA to AMD's RX Vega 56 features 2,432 CUDA cores, 152 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 8 GB of memory. It will be available at a price-point competitive with AMD's RX Vega series, and could come in custom-designs by NVIDIA's add-in card partners.

The GTX 1070 Ti will be NVIDIA's second SKU to max-out the GDDR5 clock band. The company had, in late-2016, refreshed the mid-range GeForce GTX 1060 6 GB to feature 9 Gbps memory in an effort to compensate for its narrower 192-bit wide memory interface, improving its competitiveness against the Radeon RX 480 8 GB. The company had also, at the time, refreshed the GTX 1080 with faster 11 Gbps GDDR5X memory, which means the GTX 1080 cards with the SKU's original 10 Gbps GDDR5X memory clock could be phased out of the market. NVIDIA will ride into the crucial Holiday 2017 season with its existing GeForce "Pascal" family, bolstered by the new GTX 1070 Ti.

It looks like NVIDIA's next performance-segment graphics card, the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti, could be launched sooner than expected. A report by NordicHardware, pins its launch date at October 26, 2017; ahead of the "early-November" date which was doing rounds earlier. It's also entirely possible that the card will be launched on October 26, and reviews of the card being posted, but market-availability beginning in November.

Based on the 16 nm "GP106" silicon, the GTX 1070 Ti is being designed to be almost as fast as the GTX 1080. It features 2,432 CUDA cores, 152 TMUs, 64 ROPs, and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, holding 8 GB of memory. The card is expected to perform (and be priced) within 12 percent of the GTX 1080. Its main competitor from the AMD stable is the Radeon RX Vega 56.

It turns out that NVIDIA is giving the GeForce GTX 1070 more than a minor refresh. The new performance-segment SKU, which is slated to come out just before Holiday 2017, could perform very very close to the GTX 1080, although sufficiently spaced out from the GTX 1080 refresh (featuring 11 Gbps memory). According to specifications leaked by Chinese tech publication MyDrivers, NVIDIA will give this SKU the coveted "Ti" moniker after all, and carve it out from the "GP104" silicon.

According to the report, the GTX 1070 Ti will be carved out of the "GP104" silicon by disabling just 1 out of 20 streaming multiprocessors, compared to the GTX 1070 desktop, which has 5 out of 20 disabled. This results in a CUDA core count of 2,432, which is just 128 fewer than that of the GTX 1080. The clock speeds of the GTX 1070 Ti are higher than the GTX 1070, too. It comes with a core clock of 1607 MHz, 1683 MHz GPU Boost, and an untouched 8.00 GHz (GDDR5-effective) memory clock. Interestingly, the TDP of this chip is 180W, which is the same as the GTX 1080. NVIDIA will reportedly launch the GeForce GTX 1070 Ti in early-November, 2017, at a price that's 12.5 percent cheaper than the GTX 1080.